You broke it, you own it: Magazine left with $300,000 bill after clumsy photographer smashes 2,600 year-old sculpture during photoshoot

It is the nightmare scenario that terrifies anyone who ever comes anywhere near a priceless object: one false move and disaster.

Now the nightmare has come true for a hapless art magazine which is accused of smashing to bits a 2,630-year-old African sculpture during a photoshoot of its owner’s impressive art collection.

New York collector Corice Arman says in a lawsuit against the magazine that the accident happened after photographer Eric Guillemain and his assistants carelessly moved the terracotta Nigerian piece without permission.

Payback: She wants Art+Auction to pay $300,000 for the shattered piece

She is demanding $300,000 in damages over a 'unique and irreplaceable artwork' that had been destined for a museum but now cannot be restored and is a 'total loss.'

Mrs Arman - the widow of the celebrated artist Armand Fernandez, known as Arman - said the large 50lb Nok figure was destined for New York’s Museum for African Art.

Her French husband - said to have influenced artists including Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons - was famous for using smashed and flattened items in his works, but there was nothing intentional about the fate of his widow’s prized sculpture.

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In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan, Mrs Arman says Art+Auction magazine visited her sprawling home in a converted pickle factory in May last year.

While photographing the Nok figure, which normally sits next to a fireplace in a room festooned with Andy Warhol originals, the magazine’s team moved it to the other side of the room while she was not watching, she claims.

Guillemain and his assistants didn’t use 'the due care necessary,' the sculpture toppled to the floor and 'was smashed into a myriad of pieces,' says the lawsuit.

Destiny: Ms Arman, the widow of the artist Armand Fernandez, said the 50lb Nok figure was destined for New York's Museum for African Art

'They were setting up the shoot and I heard this enormous crash,' said Mrs Arman, who said she was 'devastated' after hearing the crash.

She insisted the piece had meant so much to her because she had bought it with her late husband and it was irreplaceable.

'I lived with it for over 25 years,' she said, adding that the shoot’s photographer, assistant and art director had been 'besides themselves with grief.'

Nok sculptures are now regarded as among the iconic artifacts from Africa and Mrs Arman’s lawyer, Charles Rosenzweig, said the accident was 'a loss of world heritage.'

But Ben Hartley, the president of Louise Blouin Media, the magazine’s owner, insisted the company was not liable over the loss.

And Guillemain said he wasn’t responsible either, claiming two of the magazine’s staff decided to move the sculpture to a patch of uneven floor.

'That was their call. Unfortunately, they didn’t ask Corice before they did it. That was their mistake,' he said.

Mrs Arman said she and her husband raised two children in the cluttered apartment and neither of them ever broke anything.

'My cat has jumped on a shelf and knocked something over, but it wasn’t valuable,' she said.